BELGRADE     TORONTO     LONDON

 

    Motion Picture & Literary Agency

Oleh Lysiak traveled the world, sailed the oceans, risked everything for good material. He worked as a reporter, editor, columnist, photographer, restaurateur, carpenter, sailor, smuggler, tree planter, fishing guide, sculptor, truck driver, river guide, cook, wood cutter, trash collector, marine gravity operator and reclaimed wood broker.

 

He has written for The Oregon Journal, The Oregonian, The Norwood Post, The Aspen Daily News, The Aspen Times, The Telluride Daily Planet, The Coos Bay World, Oregon Business Magazine, The Ukrainian Weekly. His poems were published by The Boatmens Quarterly, The Bay City Slug, The Stinking Desert Gazette, Estafette Literary Journal and The Word Almanac.

 

Filet & Release is a collection of picaresque tales about fishing, hunting and working around the world, unusual because of the humor, pathos, courage, ingenuity, enthusiasm and humanity of the characters involved. The exotic locations are characters in their own right, from the high mountain streams of the Colorado Rockies, to the deck of a Russian seismic vessel in the Gulf of Benin, to the Pacific coast of Baja, to the bayous of Louisiana, to the Atlantic coast of Togo, to the silt laden desert rivers of Utahs Canyonlands, to a working lay barge in the Gulf of Mexico, to a rig tender in Manila harbor, to a sailboat in the Galapagos Islands.

 

The title is a tongue-in-cheek statement about the catch and release fly fishing mania presently in vogue. Traditional fishermen have taken their catch home to cook and eat. Contemporary fly fishermen might stop off for a glass of pinot gris and angelhair pesto instead. Millions of fishermen, in this unfortunate politically correct age, see intransigent catch and release proponents as the Marquis de Sade in chest waders, torturing fish rather than inviting them home to dinner. 

 

These stories were originally written for the Norwood Post, a small, independent newspaper in southwest Colorado, as weekly columns titled Fishing with Uncle O. One of the stories, Silverhawk Cowboss, won a Colorado Press Association award for small newspaper feature writing in 1996.

 

This book is for outdoors men, women, fishing enthusiasts, hunters, whitewater rafters, kayak aficionados, working people and readers of all ages. Filet & Release is memoir, travelogue, adventure and sports about more than just fishing for a meal, its about fishing for experience, reality, love, discovery, knowledge, fulfillment, reason.